This invention relates to a technology of reducing a period of time required for a database operation and maintenance job.
In companies, systems including databases are generally used in order to manage information. In the systems including the databases, maintenance jobs for, for example, acquiring backups of data are periodically performed.
In the systems including the databases, data accumulated and updated by online jobs may be collectively processed and summarized by batch jobs to use summarized information for business judgment.
In a batch job for summarizing accumulated information, it is necessary to access a large volume of data, and hence a load on a system tends to increase during execution of the batch job. In particular, when data is stored on an external storage medium such as a disk drive, a load due to input and output of data increases. Therefore, the batch job is often performed at night when the load is relatively small.
Therefore, in order to reduce the load due to input and output of data, a technology of reducing the number of data inputs and outputs to and from the external storage medium is proposed. For example, JP 08-6829 A discloses a technology of, when a plurality of full search requests for a database are received, reusing data read onto a memory to thereby reduce the number of data inputs and outputs to and from the external storage medium and realize a reduction in response time and improvement of throughput.
In recent years, a large capacity memory can be mounted on a system, and hence an in-memory database that stores data stored on a nonvolatile storage apparatus in the memory and reads and writes the data to thereby realize an increase in speed of processing is now on the market. In particular, when a batch job is performed, it is unnecessary to access an external storage medium during processing, and hence it is possible to obtain a significant effect in a reduction of a load on the system.